University of New Mexico School of Medicine

The school's Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion states that its programs and partnerships are "aimed at achieving diversity among qualified applicants for medical school admission."

The Diversity Council has a Learning and Resources subcommittee which will “focus on establishing a comprehensive inventory of trainings, programs, resources, and initiatives designed to enhance knowledge, skills, and competencies.”

The school's Dermatology Residency Program promotes "diversity, equity, and inclusion, and advocates for communities of color" through several initiatives including "Implicit bias and equity/inclusion training yearly" and "Diversity/inclusion and anti-racism Grand Rounds (at least 2 per year)."

The school announced an interactive workshop titled "Teaching that Promotes Antiracism for Health Equity," taking place on April 26, 2023. The objectives of this workshop are to "Demonstrate how to survey their educational materials for content that perpetuates bias and racism" and to "Demonstrate how to modify their educational materials to counter bias and racism (to provide an antiracism perspective on their teaching)."

According to the DEI’s Social Justice & Anti-Racism Action Plan, “movements such as White Coats for Black (and Indigenous) Lives, #ScholarStrike for Racial Justice, #StrikeForBlackLives, and #ShutDownSTEM have brought attention to the fact that western scholarship and teaching have often disempowered marginalized populations.” The statement further states, “It is these concerns that orient our work in the Division for Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Creating an environment that honors the cultural wealth of our students’ communities, centers them and their traditions, embraces diversity of thought and learning styles, encourages students’ pursuit of nontraditional topics of inquiry, and supports all theoretical perspectives, including those that utilize critical race, gender, and other decolonial approaches, is a way of enacting the culturally responsive pedagogy many students desire today.”

The Diversity Council has a subcommittee for Diversity Curriculum. The school has a “diversity requirement” and, furthermore, the school states that, “Co-chairs of the Diversity Curriculum committee coordinate approval of courses that may fulfill the diversity requirement by providing proposal workshops, advice on proposals, sharing the list of approved courses, and assessing that learning outcomes are being met by diversity courses. They are further involved with building a community of practice concerning delivery of diversity curriculum at UNM.”

The School of Medicine has a “U.S. & Global Diversity & Inclusion Curriculum Requirement,” which is a 3-credit course aimed to “promote a broad-scale understanding of the culture, history or current circumstance of diverse groups of people who have experienced historic and/or contemporary inequitable treatment in the U.S. or in a global context.”

The school's Department of Emergency Medicine is working on "threading DEI-related content throughout our medical school clerkship and residency and fellowship programs" which includes the topic of "Anti-racism."

The School of Medicine has Liaisons in Equity and Advocacy for Diversity Council which aims to “increase and enhance faculty diversity, equity and inclusion at UNM, with a focus on tenure-system faculty.” The council’s 2021 goals are to “increase NCFDD Memberships,” “set College/School/Branch/HSC faculty hiring goals,” “finish relevant sections of UNM 2040 Strategic Plan,” and “establish [a] plan for restorative justice: promoting inclusive climate among faculty.”

In February of 2023, the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center Office of DEI announced its new program, the Community Faculty Scholars Program. The program targets ‘under-represented minorities” and provides $20,000 to each participant.

On March 17, 2023, the school announced that it received a $660,000 grant from the American Cancer “part of the organization’s Diversity in Cancer Research portfolio and the Cancer Center will target students who are underrepresented in the sciences.”

The school's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion published links to all of the Medical School departments that have made diversity, equity, and inclusion "efforts."

The University of New Mexico School of Medicine hosts a Diversity Council. Furthermore, “The charge of the Diversity Council is to review historical documents addressing diversity at UNM and study campus climate policies and best practices addressing diversity and excellence at institutions of higher education. Data from various sources will be evaluated in determining the needs at UNM as we move to establish a UNM model that embraces diversity and excellence. The work of the Diversity Council will culminate with a re-envisioned actionable Diversity Plan that will lead our institution for the next ten years. The committee will seek ways in which this plan may be successfully woven into the very fabric of daily operations at the University of Mexico.”

The School of Medicine’s Diversity Council has a subcommittee for Climate Survey, which will “lead the task of administering a university-wide campus climate survey in Fall 2022” in order to “understand student, faculty and staff experiences with, and perceptions concerning campus climate and diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The Diversity Council has a subcommittee for Inclusive Climate, where “various climate concerns are being addressed and/or raised at UNM, including but not limited to the university seal, Adams mural, names of residence halls, presence of law enforcement on campus, concerns about bullying, discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation, perceived overall climate of racism and its effects on students, faculty and staff, specific concerns named by Native faculty (see 2019 Native Faculty Council requests to executive leaders), and other aspects of the built and virtual environment” in an effort to be “building an inclusive climate requires collaboration, gaining buy-in, and persistence.”

On February 28, 2023, the school announced that the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Office for DEI is sponsoring the Communities to Careers program.

The School of Medicine’s Office of DEI hosts “Trainee Conference Sponsorship” for “DEI-Related Conferences.”

The UNM Health Sciences Center is hosting several events as part of its goal of “celebrating diversity.”

Starting June 2023, the BSGP DEI Committee announced that it will host meetings regularly through June, July, August, and September. All UNM Health Sciences students are invited to join.

On June 29, 2023, the school signed on to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) statement in response to the Supreme Court's decision regarding race-conscious admission policies, which stated the following: “We are deeply disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle its longstanding precedent in the 2003 case, Grutter v. Bollinger, which had recognized student body diversity as a compelling interest permitting the limited consideration of race in admissions. Today’s decision demonstrates a lack of understanding of the critical benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in educational settings and a failure to recognize the urgent need to address health inequities in our country.”

On June 29, 2023, the school published its response to the Supreme Court's decision regarding race-conscious admission policies which stated the following: "This ruling has far-reaching implications affecting access to higher education for countless students for generations to come. We have yet to understand what the full impact will be, but we in academia must carefully and creatively consider how we respond to this important question: by further limiting affirmative action, what message is being sent to current and future students regarding their sense of belonging in our classrooms and on our campuses? More importantly, what must we do as institutions of higher education to make sure that students are not dissuaded by such messages? At UNM, we will lead."